Constance Baker Motley Quotes

• King thought he understood the white Southerner, having been born and reared in Georgia and trained a theologian.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Thought, Born, Understood

• King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in King, Consciously

• In my view, I did not get to the federal bench because I was a woman.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Woman, Federal

• In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School, Writing

• In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Relations, Discovered, Interested

• I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Nation

• I soon found law school an unmitigated bore.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Found, School

• I remember being infuriated from the top of my head to the tip of my toes the first time a screen was put around Bob Carter and me on a train leaving Washington in the 1940s.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Remember, Leaving

• I rejected the notion that my race or s*x would bar my success in life.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Success

  Tags in Rejected, Notion

• I never thought I would live long enough to see the legal profession change to the extent it has.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Change, Profession

• I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Before, Criminal, Involved

• How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Special, American

• Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Risk

  Tags in University, White

• Doing away with separate black colleges meets resistance from alumni and other blacks.

  Constance Baker Motley

• Columbia Law School men were being drafted, and suddenly women who had done well in college were considered acceptable candidates for the vacant seats.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Suddenly, Accept, School

• By 1962, King had become, by the media’s reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

  Constance Baker Motley

• All Southern state colleges and universities are open to black students.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Black, Open

• Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

  Constance Baker Motley

• I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teen, School, House

Constance Baker Motley (39)

Birth:	14th September, 1921
Death:	28th September, 2005
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Activist, Judge, Lawyer, Politician

About

Constance Baker Motley was born in New Haven, Connecticut. She  was an American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge and state senator. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1943. She  received her law degree in 1946 from Columbia University School of Law. She was otherwise a key legal strategist in the civil rights movement, helping to desegregate Southern schools, buses, and lunch counters. In September 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, making her the first African American woman federal judge. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Related Authors

• Jane Evershed
• Billy Bragg
• Elizabeth Smart
• Peter Camejo
• Jon Wynne-Tyson
• Dudley Field Malone
• Ella Reeve Bloor
• Wes Boyd
• Ilya Yashin
• Sonja Sohn

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 24th November

Births

• 1934 - Alfred Schnittke
• 1632 - Baruch Spinoza
• 1934 - Martin Charnin
• 1948 - Spider Robinson
• 1713 - Laurence Sterne

Deaths

• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald
• 2004 - Warren Spahn
• 1990 - Fred Shero
• 1991 - Paul Charles Caravello
• 2005 - Pat Morita